There is no dating app data

TheGloriousEv0lution · 2025-09-05T15:33:26+00:00

I don’t know about 80/20 rule specifically, but dating app data does consistently show women are extremely selective about who they swipe on

Even the Hinge CEO confirmed this in a podcast interview so I’m not sure how this is even debatable

Women aren’t as picky in real life, but when it comes to dating apps specifically it’s pretty true

Feeling_Ad_1034 · 2025-09-05T18:48:24+00:00

Make a fake tinder profile of a girl you think is a solid 7 and then you’ll have your data.

djbuss · 2025-09-05T17:48:17+00:00

You won’t find data that specific because the companies that run these dating apps have a financial incentive to covet their data and analysis of dating trends.

As you said, It’s clear that women are pickier in OLD. If you agree that women swipe right on the 7% of men they find most attractive, then the sticking point is to what degree do we expect that women’s ratings of male attractiveness are uniform.

Generally research shows that women have fairly consistent ratings of male attractiveness based on physical features (sources below). A 0.5 to 0.7 range shows that there is still room for subjective/individual preference but that there are clear objective indicators of attractiveness. If we were to apply that .5-.7 consistency to the 7% selection we would expect that women have at least 50% overlap in swiping behavior based on physical attractiveness.

I would argue that the other 30-50% of differentiation in swiping behavior is also skewed upwards toward a smaller population of men based on non-physical preferences like perceived ability to provide, education, career, humor, shared interests, personality, etc.

My interpretation of all of this is that the homogeneity of women’s swiping behavior is a lot more consistent than blue pillers would like to believe (but probably not as exaggerated as the 20% figure doomer red pillers would have you believe)

Another interesting point to consider here is that men are potentially swiping on women they find less attractive because their standards for sex are different than their standards for relationships. If the 20% of “most attractive” men are willing to swipe/sleep with/lead on a larger range of attractiveness in women that would indicate that there are potentially less attractive women being misled about the likelihood of having a relationship with the men they find most attractive.

Langlois, J. H., Kalakanis, L., Rubenstein, A. J., Larson, A., Hallam, M., & Smoot, M. (2000). Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin, 126(3), 390–423.

• A massive meta-analysis of attractiveness research. They report that inter-rater agreement is consistently moderate-to-high across studies, often r = 0.50–0.70, for both male and female faces.

Rhodes, G., Simmons, L. W., & Peters, M. (2005). Attractiveness and sexual behavior: Does attractiveness enhance mating success? Evolution and Human Behavior, 26(2), 186–201.

• Found that independent raters of male facial attractiveness showed correlations typically in the 0.6–0.7 range, supporting reliability of attractiveness ratings.

Penton-Voak, I. S., Perrett, D. I., Castles, D. L., et al. (1999). Menstrual cycle alters face preference. Nature, 399, 741–742.

• Although mainly cited for cycle effects, the methods section shows that multiple independent female raters produced reliable attractiveness scores (Cronbach’s α often > 0.6).

Rhodes, G., Yoshikawa, S., Clark, A., Lee, K., McKay, R., & Akamatsu, S. (2001). Attractiveness of facial averageness and symmetry in non-Western cultures: In search of biologically based standards of beauty. Perception, 30(5), 611–625.

• Found moderate-to-high inter-rater agreement within both Japanese and Australian groups rating male faces (r’s ~0.55–0.70).

Little, A. C., Burt, D. M., Penton-Voak, I. S., & Perrett, D. I. (2001). Self-perceived attractiveness influences human female preferences for sexual dimorphism and symmetry in male faces. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 268, 39–44.

• Reported good inter-rater consistency when women rated men’s faces (average inter-rater reliability ~0.6).

WebNew9978 · 2025-09-05T15:41:19+00:00

Actually the data that dating apps have put out shows that women are even more pickier than what 80/20 says in regard to who they do and don’t swipe on. Instead of 20%, women are only swiping right at around 5% of the men they come in contact to on those apps.

DumbWordsmith · 2025-09-05T15:54:41+00:00

There is data from Kreager et al. (sample of 8,000+ men and 6,000+ women on a dating app) suggesting that the vast majority of men on dating apps are viewed as below average in attractiveness (Figure 2).

Ten times as many men as women received 0 messages, and all but 2% of women received messages. Less than 10% of women in the lowest quintile of desirability sent messages to men at similar desirability levels, and more than half of them sent messages to men in the top two quintiles.

Now, if we're talking about only 20% of men getting into long-term relationships, then yeah, that's completely ridiculous.

Primary_Mechanic_565 · 2025-09-05T16:02:25+00:00

The 7% women are swiping on might have some variation, but it would be foolish to assume it is distributed across the entire spectrum of men.

Many women swipe left based on height alone, not to mention the criterion at come into play after that.

Anecdotally speaking:

Id consider myself a little above average. I'm 6'4 with average build and average face and not bald. Tinder would have me believe the only women interested in dating me are obese or 8000 miles away in Thailand.

projecteddesperation · 2025-09-05T21:54:29+00:00

Even MIT did the same thing that dude did in his blog post, just at a larger scale - creating mock profiles and measuring attention. Speaking of which, they found that men match with 0.6 percent of the women they swipe on while women match with about 10% of the women they swipe on.

Dating apps could easily publish anonymized data for actual better studies but they absolutely refuse to do so. Have you ever stopped to wonder why they might not want to do that?

The majority of the user base is male and most paying users are men so you probably wouldn't want to publish something that your main paying user base wouldn't want to see. It wouldn't be such a big deal if the data just showed women liking men in a reasonably normally distributed fashion but that's most certainly not what it shows and THAT is why they don't want to share it.

Aromatic-Following98 · 2025-09-05T18:42:11+00:00

The okcupid survey does not state the opposite of what the red pill states

The okcupid analytics blog was a thing for a few years and got scrubbed because it was bad for business.

There's never been any counter evidence because there is no counter evidence. Dating apps would be incentivized to promote themselves if there were any counter data. There's not. Their incentive is to hide how bad it is

It's has been reported that profiles have ELO numbers but those numbers are hidden and not shared. They could release incredibly elucidating data about the dynamics of interactions and seek to solve imbalances. They choose not to because they can't fix the system. Dating apps shovel mid looking women on top of Chads dick. McDonald's isn't going to start serving only 600 calories no simple carb 50% protein meals exclusively any time soon

Bitter_Emu6366 · 2025-09-05T16:11:18+00:00

There's a whole book written by multiple academic researchers analysing online dating what are you talking about?

The book is called " The dating divide, desire in the era of online romance"

Fine_Video7691 · 2025-09-05T23:52:33+00:00

Some say denial is the first stage of grief. Others say that denial is the last stage of ______.

IgorXY · 2025-09-05T15:43:18+00:00

I mean, at some point demanding data as proof of something is becoming ridiculous. And just because there is no actual undeniable proof, does not mean the point is incorrect. Go browse r/ Tinder, many people post their swipe statistics and share experiences. Consider it independent survey.

Data that doesn't say what red pill says (women only swiping on 7% of profiles doesn't mean they're only swiping on the same 7% of profiles)

Ah yes, because every men has some women swiping and matching with them, but red pill just enjoys whining and make things up. Look, sure there will be overlap and some differences, but in general out of every 100 men 93 will be swiped left. If you are an absolute average men, what are the chances you be top 7 in a random 100 group? How does it disprove anything.

I despise blue pill for stances like this. Instead of thinking about solution we argue that issue even exists. If you think dating is flawless and works as expected, good for you, I don't have a peer reviewed paper to disprove it, so I guess you are right, can we continue complaining please?

MongoBobalossus · 2025-09-05T15:20:12+00:00

The data probably is accurate for men struggling to get dates on dating apps which isn’t the same as “men who are dating.”

throwaway73737828 · 2025-09-05T15:42:41+00:00

Even if lets say there is no data, you can look at reality. Go to collage, go to high schools, go to groups, go to anywhere where hierarchy is, you will always find women wanting the top 5% guys of that organization, place etc.

Women’s attraction is not like hows mens is. Men can be in a room with 100 women, and he can be attracted to all 100, make the scenario reversed, and women will only have attraction for 5-10 guys at max. And funnily enough, all women are gonna chase that 5-10 guys as well. You dont need to look for any dating app data, just observe the reality.

TermAggravating8043 · 2025-09-05T15:28:42+00:00

I ask for data and sources all the time, it’s just crickets

My_House_on_Mars · 2025-09-05T16:33:06+00:00

Even if we had the data, nobody ever takes into account how the algorithm works.

OLD algorithms don't show everyone equally. There's some people it'll show you repeatedly even after swiping left they keep popping up. Some other profiles you'll never see them again.

The first people the algorithm shows you are usually popular profiles (profiles that already got a lot of swipes), making them even more popular. Then it'll show you the "premium users", then the profiles that liked your profile, then the rest.

So let's stop pretending algorithms are democratic and could be used for any kind of "study"

It's like evaluating the quality of a product without taking into account how much $$ companies spend on advertising

Livid-Log7463 · 2025-09-05T17:41:20+00:00

Even if most individual women were swiping on a different 7% of men that would still result in a much lower number of men than what the total number of women that men would be open to.

wtknight · 2025-09-05T17:20:20+00:00

I’m pretty sure that the OKCupid data do show that women only find a small number of men to be attractive. While the data show that women do eventually message some unattractive men, I also don’t think that men like the idea that they are being settled for by these women.

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anthropics · 2025-09-06T08:40:05+00:00

There is plenty of data showing differences in swipe rates, but when it comes to actual outcomes such as dates and sexual encounters, we don't see a gender imbalance. Also, the median match rate per day is the same for men and women after adjusting for the gender ratio - it's not far more skewed for men like the conventional narrative would predict. This can be largely explained by the skewed gender ratio and the different swiping dynamics this promotes. More info can be found at this Source.

chocobolamo · 2025-09-06T13:38:15+00:00

google male competitors by height

messages received by attractiveness threshhold

He says he did a tinder experiment, recall WHO IS SAYING THIS - THE GUY WHO FUCKING OWNS TINDER LOL. That blog post was from the cofounder of OK cupid who has internal access to tinders own database. Because he owns tinder (matchgroup).

Normal_Red_Sky · 2025-09-06T14:32:42+00:00

The ok Cupid blog posts which contained a lot of data that backed up red pill taking points were taken down (can't imagine why) though you can still find some of it.

Here's one famous example which clearly shows women discriminating much more on looks than men.

https://graphpaperdiaries.com/2018/10/21/judging-attractiveness/

3stun · 2025-09-07T11:39:08+00:00

Just Google "women swiping dating apps" and in 3 minutes you will see enough evidence.

3stun · 2025-09-07T11:48:12+00:00

There is a genetic study that shows modern people have genes of much smaller selection of males than females, proving that only a small portion of men produced offsprings throughout the largest part of human history.

3stun · 2025-09-07T14:38:55+00:00

Just watch this short video by hoe_math and let me know if you still have any questions.

https://www.tiktok.com/@hoe_math/video/7341063529723645230

jadzia_d4x · 2025-09-07T14:56:34+00:00

Sorry for derailing but I'm also still confused why these elusive dating app statistics are used so frequently? It's the fast food of human interaction, I understand why people do it -- it's easier to engage in than going out into the world -- but it sucks. It clearly sucks for men, as a woman I can give my anecdata to confirm I do indeed reject almost everyone when I've tried it. Since it doesn't work, why are we obsessed with it?

No-Buy7459 · 2025-09-09T01:54:01+00:00

there is a very detailed study done by ok cupid.

SexCrispies · 2025-09-05T17:23:08+00:00

You are absolutely right. Large part of the manosphere thinks it can conclude from the available data what they want to believe is true, but the data doesn't say that. It's a classic issue of people being too stupid or too ideological to correctly interpret data.

Likes also do not mean dates, do not mean sex, do not mean relationships.

the only actual data i know of, is the like distribution on Hinge, that shows that both men and women send their likes to the most desirble profiles (which are way above their leagues), and that both the bottom 50% of men and women get less than 10% of the total likes. Not much difference there, when like amount is restricted.

ctrl_f_sauce · 2025-09-05T20:15:43+00:00

In my experience, practically every guy will rank “Jennifer the 5” as a 5. Also in my experience a noteworthy percentage of girls will rank “Joe the 5” as an 8, and a significant % will rank him as a 3. I don’t think these guys want to be universally considered a 5 if it means they’re never seen as an 8.

zer165 · 2025-09-05T15:59:02+00:00

Pareto principle isn't about dating. It's about outcomes. 80% of outcomes from 20% of causes. It was never meant to be taken literally but people have because they are incels/femcels that have never spoken to the opposite sex and masturbate before going back to anime and video games. For this w/ dating it's more like 80% of women refer 50% of men. That lines up with the OkCupid data, but even that was from almost 20 years ago.

Your post, though, is straight Reddit meme: "Source? Source!? Where's your source?". Go tf outside and talk to girls/guys. That's the source. You don't need data to get up and go do something with your life.

There is no dating app data

Comments

but many men on this sub misrepresent that as saying women are all picky in the same exact way, and they're all swiping right on the same small percentage of men.

but many men on this sub misrepresent that as saying women are all picky in the same exact way, and they're all swiping right on the same small percentage of men.

Title	There is no dating app data
Author	Solondthewookiee
Upvotes	18
Comments	255
Date	September 5, 2025 3:17 PM UTC (10 months ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/1n9823u/there_is_no_dating_app_data/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/there-is-no-dating-app-data.1561343 https://theredarchive.com/post/1561343